Lumen Adds 42,000 Fiber Subs in Q4
The company didn't provide an update on efforts to sell its consumer fiber business.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2025 – Lumen added 42,000 fiber subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024 for a total of 1.08 million.
The company also built out to 105,000 new fiber locations in the quarter, which was less than expected but allowed Lumen to finish 2024 with more than 500,000 new passings, for a total of 4.16 million. Lumen also shed 97,000 subscribers from its legacy copper copper footprint, leaving 1.47 million.
Lumen CEO Kate Johnson hinted the company has more private deals in the works with big tech companies looking for capacity as they continue to dump money on data-intensive artificial intelligence products. The company inked $8.5 billion worth of those deals in 2024, with companies like Meta, Google, and AWS.
“We continue to be in deep discussions with several customers to build new routes,” she said on the company’s earnings call.
Johnson said the company was betting on its connection to the three big public cloud providers to offer cheaper and faster connections for AI hyperscalers
Lumen shares were up more than 9 percent after hours, as earnings per share beat Wall Street expectations.
Talk of a sale
The company is looking to sell at least its consumer fiber assets. Its footprint includes 4.16 million fiber passings and 17.81 million legacy copper passings.
Lumen CFO Chris Stansbury said again to think of that as two businesses, with a fiber side that’s “doing just tremendously in terms of its buildouts” but isn’t yet very profitable, and the copper side that, despite being phased out, generated more earnings because of its low maintenance costs.
“Could somebody be interested in all of that? Yes. Could somebody be interested in pieces? Yes,” he said. “We’re open to any and all of those discussions.”
Danbury didn't provide an update on the timeline of such a deal.
Analysts at New Street Research think that somebody will ultimately be one of the big three wireless carriers. The companies are expected to continue rolling up regional fiber providers in a bit to offer bundled fixed and mobile broadband.
“What Lumen is selling is a mess,” New Street analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote in an investor note last week after T-Mobile’s earnings call, noting Lumen’s fiber is interconnected with the copper that might be retained in a sale. “It will be interesting though, because the buyer of the fiber may get access to Lumen infrastructure to upgrade copper to fiber in Lumen copper markets.”
